Back in 2002, Star Trek Nemesis was released in New Zealand. It had already been out in the rest of the world, the "see it again" campaign had been run, and DVD releases had hit the shelves everywhere else.

But not in New Zealand. My friend there told me that he had been waiting to see it for months, then waited two weeks after its release ("to avoid the crowds") before going in to see it. His words:

"I went in there on the second Thursday after opening day, clutching my twenty dollar note, and stopped to look at the billboard to find out what time it was next going to run. It wasn't. It had been whisked off the screens before two weeks were up."

This particular film was apparently the catalyst of a massive lobbying campaign for their government to ban commercial imports of international DVDs within six months of the release date of a film, because that (and piracy) were the reasons people hadn't flocked to the cinema to see it and other films.